— Razorfish is closing their Ft. Lauderdale office. The 2 remaining clients there have been notified and the 7 or so employees will either be laid of or will work remotely. “We’re also moving our U.S. office operations to a more collaborative model, including the introduction of flexible, virtual working arrangements in our Boston, Ft. Lauderdale, Los Angeles, and Portland offices. We’re continuing to service our clients in those markets in a smarter, more efficient way,” employees were told in an e-mail earlier today.
Apparently at one point the agency was telling their clients that they were planning to renovate those offices.
— We hear Omnicom has “forced its way into the CDW finals on threat that they’d pull their biz from CDW.”
— McGarry Bowen has done its first work for Kraft, on MiracleWhip. Apparently Nitro lost the business and laid off 12-15 people.
— Oh, and we heard Alan Kalter sent out another e-mail today trying to explain the pension situation at Doner. Haven’t seen it, *yet*. E-mail agencyspy at gmail dot com. Oh, AdAge has the memo.
— “Hill Holliday Boston laid off 10-15 people today (and prob more to come in the next few months). They were all laid off together in one room. This is in addition to the 35-40 people they laid off in Boston before Christmas. Also, no raises or promotions for anyone this year.”
— Publicis USA appointed Kristi D. VandenBosch as CEO, Publicis & Hal Riney in San Francisco.
— There weren’t any layoffs at JWT NY yesterday, as some of you thought…
More: “Doner’s Down to 5; Couldn’t Rein in the Shepherd Connection”